Raymond Ibrahim: Nigeria: Where Jihad and Christian Persecution Run Rampant

Many around the world were recently made aware—got a small glimpse—of the Islamic jihad that plagues northern Nigeria, at the hands of Boko Haram, an organization dedicated to eradicating Christianity and enforcing the totality of Sharia law.

Last Sunday, September 29, around 1 a.m. Islamic terrorists dressed in Nigerian military uniforms invaded an agricultural college, shooting students as they slept in their dorms, killing a total of some 50 students.

As with the Islamic assaults in Kenya and Pakistan from the previous weekend—the former on a mall, the latter on a Christian church, leaving a combined total of nearly 200 people dead and hundreds injured—this latest jihadi attack in Nigeria is, far from an aberration, simply the latest in a tremendously long list of jihadi atrocities, most often targeting Christians.

Indeed, when it comes to Nigeria, it is difficult just keeping up with the atrocities—so frequent, sometimes daily, are they.

Jihadi attacks on schools and colleges are actually common. In July, 40 Christians were killed in an attack on a boarding school in Yobe state, Nigeria. The dormitory was set on fire in the attack and those fleeing gunned down. A month earlier, 16 other students were shot dead in attacks on a secondary school in Yobe and another school in Borno.

One year ago, in October 2012, Boko Haram jihadis stormed the Federal Polytechnic College, "separated the Christian students from the Muslim students, addressed each victim by name, questioned them, and then proceeded to shoot them or slit their throat," killing up to 30 Christians.

This business of separating Muslims from "infidels" and releasing the former occurs with regular occurrence during jihadi attacks (inasmuch as it is good to kill an infidel, it is bad to kill a fellow Muslim, according to Islamic law). Thus, the weekend before this most recent terror attack in Nigeria, after jihadis in Kenya had raided a packed mall, they, too, made it a point to differentiate between Muslims and non-Muslims before initiating the carnage.

While the religious identity of those slaughtered in the recent college attack is still not clear—most often, Boko Haram targets Christians and elements of the Nigerian government but Muslims are also sometimes killed as collateral—in the context of separating people according to religion, it is interesting to note that one surviving student told Reuters, "They started gathering students into groups outside, then they opened fire and killed one group and then moved onto the next group and killed them. It was so terrible."

Furthermore, the Associated Press reported that some of those killed were found with their "hands clasped under the chin, as if in prayer"—Christian prayer, that is, as Muslims do not pray with hands clasped under their chins.

That said, to a purist group like Boko Haram, Muslims who intermingle with Christians or who accept Western education, are apostate infidels, also worthy of death. Indeed, quite true to its name, "Boko Haram"—or "Western Education is a Sin"—recently declared, "Teachers who teach western education?We will kill them! We will kill them in front of their students, and tell the students to henceforth study the Quran."

Most recently a new report confirms that Boko Haram has "bombed, burned, or attacked" 50 churches in Nigeria since January 2012; 366 people—the overwhelming majority of whom were Christian—were killed in just these church attacks alone. Boko Haram has also engaged in "31 separate attacks on Christians or [southern Nigerians] perceived to be Christian, killing at least 166 persons; 23 targeted attacks on clerics or senior Islamic figures critical of Boko Haram, killing at least 60 persons; and 21 attacks on 'un-Islamic' institutions or persons engaged in 'un-Islamic' behavior, killing at least 74."

Boko Haram's attacks on half of Nigeria's population—the Christians—is so widespread and frequent that not one month ever passes without several atrocities appearing in my monthly Muslim Persecution of Christians series. Here, for instance, are some of the attacks Boko Haram launched on Christians from the last report I compiled, for the month of July, 2013, alone:

Growing numbers of Christian girls in Muslim-majority areas, where the Islamic group, Boko Haram holds sway, are being abducted, kept in the homes of Muslim leaders and forced to renounce their faith. Last year, Boko Haram had declared that it would begin doing precisely this—kidnap Christian women—as a way "to strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam."

At least 30 Christian men, women and children were slain in three villages in southern Plateau state by Islamic extremists, some of whom are suspected to be from outside of Nigeria; they raided the villages massacring all in sight and burning down approximately 100 Christian homes.

Islamic gunmen raided Dinu, a Christian village on an early Sunday morning, before church services, as happens frequently, and slaughtered six Christians, a month after Muslim Fulani herdsmen shot another Christian to death in a nearby village and destroyed the churches of four villages.

The lesson of last Sunday's jihadi attack on an agricultural college in Nigeria is one and the same with the lesson of the jihadi attacks from the previous weekend on a Pakistani church and a Kenyan mall: all these attacks are but the tip of the iceberg of widespread Islamic hostility for and violence against non-Muslim "infidels," Christians chief among them.

That the Obama administration still refuses to list Boko Haram as a foreign terrorist organization (even though Boko Haram is now directing threats at the United States); and that the Obama administration threatens the Nigerian government when it responds to the jihadis with force (warning it not to violate the "human rights" of Boko Haram) is a reminder why the viral, international jihad—in Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan, ad infinitum—is so little known in the United States, and likely will stay unknown until it strikes U.S. borders again.